New York Times Quietly Changes Inflammatory Headline Calling Attacks on Jews a ‘Gift to the Right’
Pro Palestinian protesters burn the Israeli flag in New York City last week. (Spencer Platt, Getty Images)
The New York Times ran a headline on an editorial this week that sparked a big reaction on social media, mainly from conservative commenters, on the topic of anti-Semitic violence during the flare-up and escalation of hostility in the Gaza strip. A few hours later, the paper quietly changed that headline.
“Attacks on Jews Over Israel Are A Gift To The Right” was the original headline. It was changed to read “The Crisis of Anti-Semitic Violence.” A major de-escalation by any measure.
Though the change was made without fanfare, it sparked a second big reaction on social media, again mostly from conservatives or those on the right.
Here are the two site images as archived, side by side.
In the body of the editorial, writer Michelle Goldberg acknowledges that the typical spike in anti-Semitic activity that arises in this country when “violence between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East” flares up is different this time for its flagrancy. Goldberg quotes ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt in saying that this time the rise in attacks here in the U.S. is “the brazenness and the boldness.”
“These apparent hate crimes are, first and foremost, a catastrophe for Jewish people in the United States,” Goldberg writes. She was still able to tie the blame for this to former President Donald Trump, by adding as an aggravating factor that Jews in the United States have “just endured four years of spiking anti-Semitism that started around the time Republicans nominated” him.
Having established that attacks are more public, frequent, and flagrant, and those things are harder to endure having just had to endure a Republican president who oversaw the Abraham Accords and the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, she then explains it’s even worse than you think because on top of all that, the violence “threatens to undermine progress that’s been made in getting American politicians to take Palestinian rights more seriously.”
Goldberg’s column groups “right-wing Zionists” with “anti-Semitic anti-Zionists” into a single bad guy group, who are ruining things for the Democrats who want to denounce Israel. She then continues in her editorial explaining the reasons that anti-Semitic hate crimes in the United States are so inconvenient for anti-Israel progressives like herself and Rep. Ilhan Omar.
So the article kept the spirit of the original headline, if not the actual wording.
No explanation of the reason for change from the original inflammatory headline has been attached to the article online. There is a note, however.
The characterization of violence and hatred on the basis of race or ethnicity in clinically political terms, which constituted the original headline, still appears in the print version, it explains perfunctorily.
